This time let's offer up a variety of views on what may be - and certainly should be - a principal concern for humanity across the mid 21st Century - how consciousness itself - both human and artificial - is bound to change, before our conscious gaze. Starting with news that:
IBM Watson and the X Prize Foundation are offering a $5 million award - to be handed out in 2020 - for a team that best proves how AI can be positive for humans. The emphasis will be placed on its positive effect on human kind and, in essence, show that the systems will help us instead of bringing a movie-worthy apocalypse. I have some ideas how that can be achieved – notions that have circulated quite a bit, lately, how AI might be both enhanced and kept accountable via reciprocal competition.
I may not be qualified to implement the concept… but I’ll talk to any highly qualified groups interested in exploring this approach. Indeed, it is the one and only approach that has worked in the past, with “artificial intelligences” called states and corporations... and for that matter people. It is the only method that can even conceivably work with computerized super-AI.
IBM Watson and the X Prize Foundation are offering a $5 million award - to be handed out in 2020 - for a team that best proves how AI can be positive for humans. The emphasis will be placed on its positive effect on human kind and, in essence, show that the systems will help us instead of bringing a movie-worthy apocalypse. I have some ideas how that can be achieved – notions that have circulated quite a bit, lately, how AI might be both enhanced and kept accountable via reciprocal competition.
I may not be qualified to implement the concept… but I’ll talk to any highly qualified groups interested in exploring this approach. Indeed, it is the one and only approach that has worked in the past, with “artificial intelligences” called states and corporations... and for that matter people. It is the only method that can even conceivably work with computerized super-AI.
== Ah, consciousness ==
A topic that keeps on giving
– headaches, that is. What is
consciousness? Can we improve our own?
Will we ever give this combined boon and curse to others? To machinery? To other living creatures?
For some deep thinking on the nature of consciousness: In February, I participated
in a salon panel with famed Caltech neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Christof Koch (now head of the Allen Brain Initiative) and Stanford physicist Andrei Linde who, along with
Alan Guth, is known as the father of inflation cosmology. The panel was moderated by Robert Lawrence Kuhn of the ongoing Closer to Truth PBS television series, hosted at the lovely San Francisco home of Susan McTavish Best.
August company! Christof offered some amazing – sometimes optimistic and at other times grouchy – insights into the difficulties of emulating such a vast number of info-processing and contemplation tricks that humans take for granted. Andre Linde took us on a wild tour of general relativity and string theory, finally concluding that there just has to be some kind of consciousness on a cosmic scale. A bit daunted… I managed to offer up some big picture concepts of my own.
Again, you really should have a look at the Closer to Truth TV series. Big ideas galore. Here's a clip where I discuss with Robert Lawrence Kuhn about What carries our sense of personal identity?
August company! Christof offered some amazing – sometimes optimistic and at other times grouchy – insights into the difficulties of emulating such a vast number of info-processing and contemplation tricks that humans take for granted. Andre Linde took us on a wild tour of general relativity and string theory, finally concluding that there just has to be some kind of consciousness on a cosmic scale. A bit daunted… I managed to offer up some big picture concepts of my own.
Again, you really should have a look at the Closer to Truth TV series. Big ideas galore. Here's a clip where I discuss with Robert Lawrence Kuhn about What carries our sense of personal identity?
But others are delving this
mine! With a brilliant analysis two decades in the making, Robin Hanson shows that
our hyper-smart "downloaded" -- or emulated -- heirs will still have
ambitions, triumphs and thwarted desires. They'll make alliances, compete,
cooperate... and very-likely love... all driven by immutable laws of nature and
economics. Super intelligence may be a lot more like us than you imagined. But
you’ll still have to wait a few months, before reading The Age of EM: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth.
Robin’s fundamental premise is that only one
of the six general categories of approaches to making AI will bear fruit, at
least in the near term – the method of emulating in software the process of a
human mind. His reasoning: that we are most-likely to succeed by copying what has already worked.
The other five approaches – including AI from principle-design and AI via emergence from complexity and AI from evolved systems – he deems to be much farther away. Many will disagree. It happens that I think Hanson is just a bit more likely to be right, than wrong. Though I don't think the others should be dismissed with a shrug!
In any event, given a proliferation of human-based software emulations, or “Ems,” and assuming a flat-open-fair civilization employs them, what resulting social and even sexual systems will emerge from the basic laws of nature and economics? See abstracts of all thirty chapters... and my blurb... here.
The other five approaches – including AI from principle-design and AI via emergence from complexity and AI from evolved systems – he deems to be much farther away. Many will disagree. It happens that I think Hanson is just a bit more likely to be right, than wrong. Though I don't think the others should be dismissed with a shrug!
In any event, given a proliferation of human-based software emulations, or “Ems,” and assuming a flat-open-fair civilization employs them, what resulting social and even sexual systems will emerge from the basic laws of nature and economics? See abstracts of all thirty chapters... and my blurb... here.
While we’re at it, there’s a
new book series using sci fi to examine consciousness from many angles:
“Discognition (by Steven Shaviro) looks at science fiction in order to think about questions of
consciousness. Each of us knows that he or she is conscious; and most of us
take it for granted that not only human beings are conscious, but animals like
dogs and cats are as well. But how far downwards does consciousness go?” -- from a review on Omni Reboot.
Very much related to this
topic: One of the most disturbing
insights into human nature came when a psychologist named Stanley Milgram conducted in the 1960s experiments that showed how easily a large percentage of
people can “get into” roles that involve inflicting pain upon others. These excuses can range from the heinous Nazi
factotums whose banal rationalization was “only following orders” to students who were
unable to say “stop!” when an experiment or game clearly has gone too far.
“Milgram concluded with his
research that people were more willing to harm other people when ordered to do
so by someone else. The new study indicated this is because people can separate
themselves from the action when the initial idea comes from someone else.”
The later “Stanford Prison Experiment” results should caution all of us to role play, in our own minds” being that person who has the will and power to say Hold. Enough.
Now science has zeroed in on brain function zones that seem to be involved in all this. A team of neuroscientists has pinpointed the brain's reaction to receiving an order from an authoritative figure to inflict harm on another person.
The later “Stanford Prison Experiment” results should caution all of us to role play, in our own minds” being that person who has the will and power to say Hold. Enough.
Now science has zeroed in on brain function zones that seem to be involved in all this. A team of neuroscientists has pinpointed the brain's reaction to receiving an order from an authoritative figure to inflict harm on another person.
Related? Why are only 20% of synapses active during neurotransmission? "When stimulated electrically to release dopamine (a neurotransmitter or chemical released by neurons, or nerve cells, to send signals to other nerve cells), only about 20 percent of synapses — the connections between cells that control brain activity — were active at any given time."
== Brains! And VIRTUAL brains... ==
Modern tech era pioneer Kevin Kelly (author of the upcoming The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape our Future) emailed me an interesting question. “Everyone can see where VR is going in a serious manner. What I want to know is, what is the VR equivalent of cat videos on the internet?”
In Existence I show characters click-scrolling through a myriad augmented reality overlays, from mapping their route to looking inside those buildings that offer animated in-views. Or overlaying all buildings with vines and turning passing cars into dinosaurs while equipping all passersby with floor-length Fu Manchu mustaches. Seriously, I've seen no sign of recognition of the potential, even from the folks bringing this world closer.*
But Kevin was asking near-term... interesting question. What will be the biggest VR time sink and productivity destroyer?
My first thought is tamagotchi... those virtual pets from the 1990s who you'd "feed" with a button and who would "die" if you neglect them. My first expectation is that tamagotchi will come roaring back, when your VR specs give you a virtual pet designed for max lovability and cuteness. Stick out your finger and Mr. Bluebird will hop there from your shoulder, whistle happily and take a treat. If there's someone you detest, Mr. B will chirp angrily and hover over your foe, making droppings. And when your thirty day free trial is up, your little friend will wail mournfully till you sign up monthly, then upgrade... then upgrade....
== Missing Marvin ==
== Missing Marvin ==
Cool Elon Musk aphorism. "Interesting to
think of physics as a set of compression algorithms for the universe. That's
basically what formulas are." It reminded me of something Marvin Minsky would have said. Marvin was a great friend and mentor to so many, in whose myriad company I humbly include myself, for this great and vivid person said that I could. His love of thought-provoking science fiction first drew us together. But Marvin’s wildly varied and unlimited interests soon forged other bridges.
I
could count on Marvin to offer up some unusual perspective under almost any
topic, from the nature of consciousness to technology to the rainbow arcs of
history and culture. He was among the
earliest to shrug off C.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” mythology, that science and
the humanities are mutually incomprehensible, leaping instead to set up
collaborations across every spectrum, incorporating fun and literature and art
in almost every project that he had a hand in, at the Media Lab.
Like
all the top minds I have known, Marvin was a polymath, whose music and puckish
wit seemed as important to him as any of the subjects that he taught (so well)
at MIT -- where he authored the classic The Society of Mind. His cheerful, egalitarian ways
made him approachable even by shy students. His legacy of free-thinking explorers
spans the globe. It
feels strange knowing that he is now too far to call up or skype. I should have
done it more, when I had the chance. But he seemed ageless, as if ready to talk
Death into dropping all plans in order to become his student. Hm. A good idea
for a story. I know Marvin would have
liked that.
== Miscellany Science ==
In Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Predicting,
Philip Tetlock and coauthor Dan Gardner offer a masterwork on prediction,
drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive, government-funded
forecasting tournament - The Good Judgment Project.
An Israeli bio-tech company has developed an anti-radiation therapy the US government may begin stocking next year. They claim to “cure 100% of patients exposed to unconventional radiological incidents like a terrorist dirty bomb, or an attack on a nuclear power plant.” A spokesman said that within 48 hours of someone receiving the company's placenta cell injections, bone marrow blood cell production levels returned to normal, and animals fully recovered from the high radiation exposure.
Scientists have developed the first digital data storage system capable of creating archives that can survive for billions of years. “Using nanostructured glass, the system has 360 TB per disc capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C, and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (or 13.8 billion years at 190°C ).” The resulting disks look a lot like the one Tommy Lee Jones held up, in Men in Black. This has been needed for a long time!
The human
papillomavirus vaccine was first recommended for adolescent girls in the United
States in 2006. Since that time, the prevalence of the cancer-causing virus has
been dropping among young women, according to a new study. Oh. Yeah vaccines are eeee-vul.
12 stories of
recent serendipitous – surprise science discoveries.
== Energy & Earth ==
In Half Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life, E. O. Wilson suggests that humans set aside roughly 50 percent of the planet as a sort of permanent preserve, undisturbed by man. I portrayed this happening in the future… and it will… once we get past these crises and use asteroids to get rich…
The Middle East recently experienced its worst drought in 900 years, according to a new study from NASA. In other words, a lot of the refugee crisis and desperate radicalism is a direct result of climate change. And those who have been obstructing energy efficiency for 30 years - (ironically, at the behest of oil sheikhs and coal barons) - have not only waged war on science. They (meaning some of you) have made the world a more desperately dangerous place.
Sea levels are rising faster than at any other times in 3000 years. And of course oceans are also acidifying. Point out to your denialist-cult friends that Fox is not even bothering to issue deceitful talking points about that. All they can do is distract… like pointing at a single NOAA report and yelling “squirrel!” When will our dear friends out there who are captives of this cult put 2 + 2 together and notice whose interests are served?
One
of the Koch-Saudi talking points that are suckled on Fox is that solar photovoltaic
systems are not that green, because of the carbon footprint used in melting the
silicon and manufacturing the rooftop systems. Here is some refutation of that made-up piece of anti-future propaganda - suggesting your rooftop solar installation earns back its carbon footprint from manufacturing in one year.
I invite rebuttals or addenda below, under comments.
I invite rebuttals or addenda below, under comments.
The US may not
be the “Saudi Arabia of coal,” after all.
When weighed against likely mining and recovery costs, even the vast Wyoming beds now calculate out as only a few decades’ supply. Of course that changes if we leave the coal
where it is, readily accessibly by future generations, if they need it. That’s already happening, as two major coal
companies, hard-pressed by cheap natural gas and rising sustainables, have gone
bankrupt.
3-D-printed
organs aren’t quite ready for human transplant.
But as forecast in my story “Chrysalis,” the barriers to crafting replacement or supplemental organs are toppling almost daily.
Remember the cargo zeps in
EXISTENCE?* Well these companies are wagering that the era is (finally) nigh!
* More on Augmented reality AND future zeppelins? Have a look at the amazing video preview-trailer for Existence, with incredible art by Patrick Farley!
